Only 50 Great Books of the Last 50 Years?

Published: August 9, 1991

To the Editor:

Russell Baker is wrong to despair in "Looking for Giants" (column, July 27) about the caliber of books written in the last 50 years. The biggest challenge in the Port Washington, L.I., library project he discusses -- asking 50 experts to survey books written since 1942 that have "profoundly affected the thoughts and actions of humankind" -- will be in paring down the list.

To pick only a few essentials: Where would environmentalism be without Rachel Carson's searing classic of 30 years ago, "Silent Spring"? What about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Why We Can't Wait," which rallied millions of people to the civil rights movement? And how can one overlook Alan Paton's "Cry, the Beloved Country," which awakened the world to the tragedy of South African apartheid?

As much as ever, great books continue to spread mighty ideas. One of the biggest blows to Soviet-style Communism has been the writing of Aleksandr Solzhenitzyn, as he exposed the horrors of "The Gulag Archipelago." In the West, Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" spurred a generation of new conservatives to propound free-market views around the globe. The death of Oswald Spengler hasn't meant the end of bold, prophetic writing on the biggest political issues of our time.

It saddens me that Mr. Baker believes the literature of modern science is almost impenetrable. The biggest breakthroughs of the last 50 years have been chronicled with a clarity that matches the beauty and drama of the underlying research. Humankind would be poorer indeed without "The Double Helix" by James Watson and Francis Crick or Douglas Hofstadter's "Goedel, Escher, Bach" or "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. Such books are beacons that attract new generations to science and technology; they simultaneously bring the wonders and perils of advanced research within the public's grasp.

Has our literary world the last 50 years truly been bereft of a James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway or Marcel Proust? Not if one looks beyond white male novelists born in the United States and Western Europe. We have been blessed since 1942 by an extraordinary literary outpouring from authors as diverse as the earth's population. The writings of Yukio Mishima, Jorge Luis Borges, Toni Morrison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Chinua Achebe and dozens of other novelists have challenged and dazzled readers on every continent.

Yes, television (and videotapes and computers) compete with books to in fluence people. But the power of the printed word hasn't dulled. Mr. Baker should stop by a bookstore or public library. The selection gets better all the time. GEORGE ANDERS New York, July 27, 1991